A Municipal Restaurant with about twenty tables stood here at Rock Edge from c.1942 to 1956. It is still possible to see some pieces of stone and concrete in the grass.

Kelly's Directory, 1945

The road called Rock Edge in Headington runs from Windmill Road to York Road, winding around the grass at the top of the former quarry that is now also known as Rock Edge but was originally called Crossroads or Windmill Quarry.

The road is named Rock Hedge at its first appearance in Kelly's Directory in 1936: eleven houses were then listed there, on the north side only. All directories thereafter spell the road as Rock Edge.

By 1945 (right) the road had 21 houses on the north side, but at the end there is also a surprising first-time listing on the south side where today there is just grass:

• Municipal Restaurant No. 6.

Despite its omission from Kelly's Directory for 1943, it seems likely that this restaurant opened at Rock Edge in 1942/3 (see the sequence in which Oxford's municipal restaurants were numbered in the list below).

Municipal or British Restaurants were originally called community feeding centres, and they were set up by the Ministry of Food in 1940 and run on a non-profit basis:

• More information

Richard Brown, who lived at Rock Edge during the Second World War, recalls:

The building was a large semi-cylindrical, corrugated metal construction similar to a large Nissen Hut. It was well used and was always busy. From what I can remember, the food was always very palatable and adequate but, of course, no frills. The No 2 bus stopped in Windmill Road between Rock Edge and Old Road. This was the terminus for that bus so I guess it brought custom to the Restaurant.

The Civic Restaurants Act of 1947 allowed those municipal restaurants that were still profitable to remain open as Civic Restaurants, run by the local council. Hence this one at Rock Edge remained open until about 1956.

This Historic England aerial photograph showing the Municipal Restaurant at Rock Edge in 1947:

The ten Municipal Restaurants in wartime Oxford

Ten municipal restaurants operated in Oxford during the Second World War, and had numbers rather than names. Some were in huts, and others in existing buildings ranging from the Town Hall to a scout hut. The date listings are taken from Kelly's Directory

• No. 1 (St Clement's)
  (Municipal Restaurant No. 1 was listed at the Congregational Church Hall, Cowley Road in 1943 only).
  The number 1 was then transferred to a restaurant at York Place, St Clement's: this was listed in directories from 1945 to 1972 immediately after the printing works at 10–13 York Place: see photograph. This restaurant was popular with the boys of the nearby Magdalen College School from the 1940s to 1972, as no school dinners were provided there in this period. (When the “Muni” closed in 1972, the boys had to share the East Oxford School canteen in Cross Street until the school at last had its own canteen in the later 1970s.) It was demolished in 1979 to make way for Anchor Court (planning application 78/01040/HLA_H)
• No. 2 (Rose Hill)
  This is listed at the Community Centre in Ashurst Way from 1943 to 1945 only
• No. 3 (Central Oxford)
  This is listed at the New Road Chapel Sunday School at 7 New Inn Hall Street from 1943 to 1947. It opened on 14 July 1941, and about 500 people a day ate there. The pupils of the Oxford Central Girls' School next door who lived too far away to go home were allowed to stay to lunch, but as there was insufficient food and space to feed all of them, they alternated between the efforts of the school's cookery classes and this municipal restaurant, with one pupil remembering its smell of curry and watery cabbage.
• No. 4 (Botley)
  This is listed at Rink House (part of the Majestic Cinema that closed in 1940) at 110 Botley Road from 1943 to 1945 only
• No. 5 (New Marston)
  This is listed at the Scout Hall on the corner of the Marston Road and William Street from 1943 to 1945
• No. 6 (Headington)
  This is the one at: Rock Edge with full details above. It is listed from 1945 to 1956, but given the sequence of numbers, it seems likely that this one should have been listed in Kelly's Directory for 1943 but was accidentally omitted
• No. 7 (Cowley St John east)
  This was listed at the Recreation Ground, Marsh Road from 1943 to 1964
• No. 8 (Central Oxford)
  This is listed at the Assembly Room, Town Hall, St Aldate's, from 1943 to 1960
• No. 9 (North Oxford)
  This is listed at the St Giles parish room at 10 Woodstock Road from 1943 to 1966
• No. 10 (Central Oxford)
  This is listed at the Canal Wharf, New Road from 1943 to 1945

Civic restaurants (from 1947)

Some of the above municipal restaurants continued to operate after the Second World War as civic restaurants (but were still described with their former name). The following new civic/municipal restaurants were opened after the war:

• No. 11 (Gloucester Green)
  This opened in August 1947 and is listed at George Street (to the west of Chain Alley) from 1947 to 1976 (the last Kelly's Directory published):
  Planning permission to demolish this former restaurant was granted in 1984 (84/00282/LH)
• Unnumbered (Cowley Centre)
  A municipal restaurant is listed at Pound Way, Cowley Centre from 1966 to 1968 only

Memories of the Municipal/Civic Restaurants

Madge Martin in her diary (published as A Vicar's Wife in Oxford 1938–1943) writes as follows about her visit on 29 November 1941 after shopping to Municipal Restaurant No. 3 in New Inn Hall Street to save them from worrying about what to get for lunch: “It was a rather interesting experience, and we got a very good hot lunch, and frightfully cheap — grown-ups a shilling, for meat, vegetables, pudding, roll, and a cup of tea, and children 4d!”

Her husband Robert Martin, the Vicar of St Michael-at-the-Northgate Church, visited Municipal Restaurant No. 8 in the Town Hall Assembly Room on 1 December 1943, writing “Not bad 'Cottage pie' and marmalade pudding for about 1s. 4d.”

In her book These Ruins are Inhabited Muriel Beadle gives a less flattering description of the food served at the St Clement's Municipal Restaurant in the 1950s. She was the wife of the American scientist and Nobel prizewinner George Beadle who had accepted a year’s appointment as a visiting professor at the University of Oxford. and her son by her first marriage, Redmond James Barnett, attended Magdalen College School for year:

See also

• Malcolm Graham, Oxfordshire at War, pp. 145–6.
• Oxfordshire History Centre PA Pamphlets (strongroom) OXFO/647.9/MUNI
  “City of Oxford – Municipal restaurants : revenue account : statement of income and expenditure for the period 1st April 1942 to 31st March 1943 / F. M. Walker”